GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 75200 (261%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be quite a bit (more or less 1000%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (1000%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (529%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.